Man gets prison term for assault of runaway

APPLETON — A man sentenced to two years in prison on Thursday for sexually assaulting a 12-year-old runaway should have recognized the warning signs that the girl was younger than 18, an Outagamie County judge said.

"I do think you are a smart enough person that you should have been able to detect something that didn't pass the smell test," Judge Gregory Gill told Jesse Philip Spence-Baakko, whose job as a bouncer required him to gauge peoples' ages.

The prison term against Spence-Baakko, 34, of Appleton will be followed by four years of extended supervision. Conditions of extended supervision require Spence-Baakko stay in compliance with the sex offender registry rules, not use any dating websites and have no contact with anyone under the age of 18. He was convicted in June of second-degree sexual assault of a child. A charge of first-degree sexual assault of a child was dismissed.

A central question in the case was whether Spence-Baakko knew that the girl, whom he met on a dating website, was younger than 18 when she traveled to Appleton from Milwaukee. The girl's profile on a dating website listed her age as 20, Assistant District Attorney Alex Duros said at Thursday's sentencing.

Spence-Baakko told police he thought she was 20, according to the criminal complaint.

Gill said he didn't think Spence-Baakko was a malicious person who intended to have sex with a 12-year-old. But there were warning signs that she was not an adult: she had to get a ride to Appleton, she said her mom gave her permission to move and she was wearing a GPS monitoring device, Gill said.

"In this situation, you didn't ask the tough questions," said Gill, who added that ignorance could not be used as an excuse for this type of behavior.

According to the criminal complaint, the girl got a ride to Spence-Baakko's Appleton residence in March from a man in his 60s.

The girl and Spence-Baakko had sex and she was later found at his residence through the GPS monitoring device she was wearing. She told investigators that she had been sexually assaulted by a man, who investigators identified as Spence-Baakko.

"It is my sincere belief that he had no knowledge whatsoever of this girl's true age," Spence-Baakko's attorney, Robert Welygan, said at the sentencing.

Spence-Baakko took the girl's word for it that she was an adult, Welygan said.

"Jesse had no intent to commit this crime," Welygan said. "Jesse had no intent to exploit a minor."

Duros, the prosecutor, said the girl had been previously sexually assaulted and was a suspected victim of human trafficking. And although she did not look like a typical 12-year-old in her profile picture, there were red flags that Spence-Baakko should have noticed.

"His job is to determine if people are 21 or not," Duros said after the sentencing.